You Know Graphic Novels Really Have Arrived When…

Alison Bechdel's award-winning and fantastic graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, hit the trade paperback circuit earlier this month and is prominently displayed next to prose bestsellers on the 3 for 2 front table of a Borders near you.

That may not sound like much of a "victory" to many of you, especially to those who like their comics superpowered. Nevertheless, the well-deserved attention given to books like Fun Home, Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese and David Peterson's Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 have done more to advance the perception of this medium beyond the Bat and the Spider, arguably, since Blankets and From Hell, in the eyes of John Q. Public.

BTW, if you want to learn more about the genius behind Fun Home, Bechdel is a featured guest (and Festival Award winner) at this weekend's MoCCA Art Festival 2007 in New York and at next month's Comic-Con 2007 in San Diego.